Kathleen, your dad was a GEM!!

I hope we hear more today. Anyone else?

When he came home, he would take a short nap, put on a white shirt and a tie, and come downstairs for dinner. He was very well read and had a library of classics, every copy of Life Magazine (in binders), and books on science of all sorts and he would show me things of interest that he was studying. The race to the moon was very high on the list and I remember sitting in front of our little black and white TV watching the fuzzy pictures the day that Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar lander. Consequently, I am interested in just about everything and I learned the value of reading both new and classic literature. He would have loved the Internet in its form today!

We also had a shop in the garage where we would do metal projects like iron railings and such. My dad was very creative and always was applying the creativity into other fields. At the GE, all the shop guys brought lunch pails usually with some kind of meat and bread sandwich and other goodies. My dad was working in the sheet metal division and was building submarine control panels which had little heating coil elements in them to keep some of the instruments warm (this is 1950’s-60’s technology). He wanted to have a way to heat a sandwich up so he made a little box with a tray and a door and placed the heating coils in the top with a cord to a DC power supply. You could then place your sandwich on the tray, close the door, and plug in the coils and – voila – hot sandwiches in about 3 minutes! Soon there were guys lined up to use the little sandwich heater and an engineer from corporate heard about it and came down to look at it. In about a year and half, the GE Toaster Oven appeared on the market. My dad didn’t get anything for his invention but he did get his sandwiches heated and made the shop pretty happy. Sometimes the best rewards for great ideas are not monetary but the lives you help and affect (although this did teach me a valuable lesson about checking what kind of IP rights I have under a contract!)

On Fridays he got paid by check and our trip home would require a stop at the bank. He would cash his check and 15% stayed in the bank in a savings account (how many of us do that?). Then we would go home and he would come down to the kitchen table with the “Shoebox” which had envelopes for each monthly bill and place money in each envelope. Most bills we paid by cash as my mom would go to the utility companies and pay them. The few checks they wrote were done by money order from the bank. Unfortunately I learned almost nothing from this as easy credit, spend-it-now, and other bad financial habits were inculcated into me and it has taken years to learn the hard way about money! I didn’t learn about the power of compound interest until I had frittered away many good savings years. If you are 20’s-30’s check this out http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/04/02/the-extraordinary-power-of-compound-interest/ and get started now…

Above all my dad cared about people and went out of his way to volunteer his time to help. He was an Explorer Scout leader and their troop build handmade canoes. I remember going up to their little shop with my older brothers who were both Explorers and smelling polyurethane and fiberglass resin as they built the canoes (my brothers were 10 years older than me). In the spring my dad would take the Explorers up to the Adirondack Mountains and they would run white water. I would pick up the pieces of the inevitable wreckage… My dad taught me a great love for nature and the fun of adventure – even if you do smash your canoe up!

Dad wasn’t too much of a politician. We lived across the street from the Democratic Club and he would help out at the clam bakes but he never talked much about politics. He was a life long AFL-CIO member and I remember one Christmas when the union had been on strike for over 6 months. We had been living on almost nothing and the union strike fund was running out. I got a pair of socks for Christmas. But my dad wouldn’t break a strike line regardless of how hard it got on us. What I learned here was to move to a Right to Work state and stay out of unions…

Dad was a great guy and for someone who never more than $40k a year in his life he left an amazingly large inheritance for my mom and us. The biggest inheritance was himself and I hope I do half as well.
Thanks dad, I miss you.

I keep a piece of artwork in my office. It is printed on an old US flag (well, not a real flag) and is based on something “inspired by The National Institution of Moral Instructions, Washington, DC 1913″ (I would hate to see what a place like that would do today, but this one makes sense to me.) Every time I read it, I’m thankful my dad taught me this lesson:

Self Reliance.
I will gladly listen to the advice of older and wiser people; I will reverence the wishes of those who love and care for me; but I will learn to think for myself. I will not be afraid of being laughed at. I will not be afraid of doing right when the crowd does wrong.

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dad’s out there, especially to my Dad, who is the greatest man I’ve ever known.

From working in his office I learned how to behave in the corporate world, long before most kids ever are exposed to that environment. He encouraged me to learn computing as early as the late 70’s, (BTW, it was an ALTOS – google it!) which was a head-start that most kids my age never got. I did my first programming in Q-BASIC while working for him. I wrote a program which actually figured out people’s taxes and deductions on their weekly paychecks – all because I’d do a little something and he’d encourage me by saying “that’s good, but why don’t you add this too…”

Overall, I didn’t really appreciate my relationship with my Father until I was old enough to relate to him on a more adult level – but once I became more adult, I came to value our relationship more and more, and still do – and I appreciate everything he taught me about business, respect for others, work ethics, money, and lots more. Love you, Dad!